You Never See The Bullet
by Phate3092
Summary: "And don't you forget, you never see the bullet that takes you down." Tagged for 'A hole in the heart' Warning: Major Character Death.
1. Chapter 1

A blue moon is the appearance of the third full moon in a season that has four full moons and it doesn't happen very often. Maybe, just as often as a friend dying in your arms.

There was a beautiful full moon, hung in between the buildings and the trees like a saucer of milk, on the silent drive back to booth's apartment . The blue moon illuminated the shadows in its ghostly light, but although the night was beautiful, the silence hung in trepidation, a tangible silence which screamed with the heaviness of the day. Even when they spoke, talked about who should sleep on the couch and who should sleep on the bed, a soft and terrible silence hung between them. That repeating phrase maddening and relentless in Brennan's head.

_Please don't make me leave._

So she never went to sleep, but lay on the couch, Surrounded by some disembodied voice of her intern, former intern. The oppressive blackness that was only broken by the silvery moonlight sneaking through the cracks in the blinds.

Once she had made the decision, there was no questioning it. No logical calm to pervade over the pounding in her brain of his words, circling and circling.

Booth awoke from a nightmare, a dream about guns and keeping very still, when she entered his room. A silent shadow silhouetted against the gaping hole of the doorframe. As she spoke, in her sad girl voice, he was struck by how beautiful she was. Her eyes still sparkled with tears in that darkness, and as they fell back into bed and into a deep period of shared silence.

"Do you think Vincent died with regrets?" she asked, her eyelashes curled up at the ceiling. Booth didn't speak; he curled his fingers around her arm to tug her closer in the moonlight.

"I don't want to live with regrets, Booth"

Now when she looked at him, her face was timid and a little hopeful.

"I don't want to regret" she bit her lip, and he kissed her. A soft and brushing kiss, the kind that can say a lot more than words.

"Me either" he said, finally.

He brushed her hair back with his free hand and she kissed him. Her kiss was like a prayer and it seemed that the silence evaporated there in that moment or perhaps everything had just then, faded away, two people who were living a different life just hours ago, but now they were just the two of them, awash in the moonlight, their hearts beating as one.

In the morning before booth awoke, Brennan left his bed. She sat cross-legged on his couch staring at the sunlight ripping through the blinds menacingly. Her eyes were sad but her porcelain skin was awash in a glow and as booth was awakened by the empty cold space in his bed, he began to wonder if that had been a dream. Some kind of maddeningly wonderful dream...

When finally he joined Brennan on the couch and looked at her that was when he knew for sure it hadn't been a dream at all.

"I want to give us a chance, bones" he said. Softly, it was almost a prayer, not quite a whisper. Her blue eyes could still take his breath away.

"Yes" was the only thing she said.

Sometimes we move through the days like little moments, they all go passing by, and we accept them. Sometimes we forget what it really means, like when Booth kissed Brennan on the cheek when he dropped her off at work and she rubbed it off or how when Seeley Booth was attacked by an intense memory of her fingertips touching his skin, he pushed it out of his head. After all, there was duty to attend to.

It seems so easy to forget how much the little things can actually matter.

Booth, running in between the storage containers, clicking on the phone, and finding out that Brodsky's hand was broken. He was reminded that War is chaos. War is unpredictable. That if you live by the sword you will die by the sword but that isn't what he thinks about. He is all muscle memory and long practiced sniper training at the moment, not a lover but a solider. And this was instinct.

With impressively quiet footfalls, he ran. He pushed his feet up to pass the clearing between the two containers and there was a sharp clear crack. His back hit the wall with the force of his own momentum. He opened his mouth to declare a taunt, but all that came out was a bright clear gurgle and the taste of blood in his mouth. He buckled his knees and slid to the ground, clutching his rifle to his chest.

There is was again, the bright white skin in the moonlight, flooding into his brain. A voice all crystal and clear.

_If you don't get Brodsky, we're next_

There was a beautiful clarity about the moment Brodsky rounded the corner to finish the job, to see if he had hit his mark. A brilliant moment of flash and the blistering pain of the kickback of booths rifle when it cracked his collarbone. Brodsky's head exploded in A myriad of brain and blood.

A fitting end for the both of them.

White skin in the moonlight, that flashing memory of her hair spread out like a halo on the pillow, dark and beautiful.

Moonlight.

And the wounded solider lifts his head to the sky, all sparkling, the sky is the same color of her eyes. That color which consumes him, which he fades into.

"He never made it to the hospital" She heard herself say, but it sounds disembodied and sort of like a lie.

They had all been poised to celebrate Brodsky's defeat, but instead were crushed by a deafening blow and as each face falls, as Angela makes a sobbing sound in the corner, the silence, heavy and deafening, fell around her once again.

She feels like crying, but she only feels like crying once in a blue moon.


	2. Chapter 2

Arlington National Cemetery seems to stretch into forever, up and down hills all lined with pretty white tombstones. You wouldn't have to tell Temperance Brennan as she walked among those markers, the importance of such a monument, in homage to a nations fallen soldiers.

As promised, she had not gone to the funeral, but Parker had shown her that folded flag which had been draped across his father's casket.

Once upon a time, she would have been able to shove this into a box in her brain, and lock it away forever, but that was before the plunge. After that, after surrender, after loving someone with her whole heart, life would never be the same. Three days after he died, she had crawled into his bed in his apartment, that memory of his touch in the moonlight assaulting her. When she awoke in the morning, it seemed as if she had washed away the smell of him with her tears.

On the day of his funeral, the most beautiful summer rain fell, the river was misty and on the phone Angela had said it seemed like the earth its self was crying.

Temperance paced up and down those aisles of granite until she found it. His tombstone was uniform like all the others, devoid of a symbol of rebellion. It was one marker among thousands, she felt alone in this city of the dead. She laid his cocky belt buckle down beside the words

Joseph Seeley Booth

Written out in harsh black script. For a long while she stood staring at it, and when she finally spoke, the words came out strangles and harsh.

"Is it worth it?" she asked. It was silent and empty; the sun was beginning its decent, sliding down a beautiful blue sky.

"To have your own happiness so contingent upon another human being"

Like a half remembered dream, she heard Booth's voice from years before say it.

"Of course"

After that memory had crashed upon her, the tears began again. Falling off her eyelashes and onto the grass, where they sparkled in the orange light of the setting sun.

"Angela and Hodgens had their baby" she said. She liked to think, he would have been happy for them.

"I thought they would be more apprehensive, but Angela says it was wonderful."

She took in a sharp breath, and let out a little strangled sound.

"Angela says it was the best day of her life." She paused; the sunset illuminated the sky and the river with orange and purple. It was a striking contrast to the miserable grey of temperance's skin.

"Do you think..." for a moment she forgot he could not hear her, and looked down at her shoes, wiping a left over tear from her cheek.

When she looked back at the cross, she stared at it as if she believed somehow she could make eye contact.

"I'm pregnant" she said.

The light in the sky had almost faded completely now, a sprinkling of stars had begun to show through the twilight, and over the river hung the slight crescent of the moon.

"You're the father" it was so quiet she barely heard herself.

She imagined, vividly, his face break out into a grin.


End file.
